The Unbought Tenants' Association was an agrarian political party in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

 in the 1920s. Under the Irish Land Acts

Irish Land Acts

The Land Acts were a series of measures to deal with the question of peasant proprietorship of land in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Five such acts were introduced by the government of the United Kingdom between 1870 and 1909...

, most farmers in the preceding decades had acquired the freehold to their farms; the Association represented the interests of remaining tenant farmer

Tenant farmer

A tenant farmer is one who resides on and farms land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management; while tenant farmers contribute their labor along with at times varying...

s. It developed into the Northern Ireland Liberal Association, whose first president was Robert Nathaniel Boyd, previously president of the Unbought Tenants.

In the 1925 Stormont election

Northern Ireland general election, 1925

The Northern Ireland general election, 1925 was held on 3 April 1925. It was the second election to the Parliament of Northern Ireland. It saw significant losses for the Ulster Unionist Party, although they maintained their large majority. This was the last election for the Stormont parliament...

, George Henderson

George Henderson (Northern Ireland politician)

George Henderson was a farmer and politician in Northern Ireland.Henderson worked as a farmer in County Antrim. Around the time of his retirement, he was appointed Chairman of the Unbought Tenants' Association. Standing as a representative of that group, he won a seat in Antrim at the Northern...

 was elected under the Unbought Tenants label for Antrim

Antrim (Northern Ireland Parliament constituency)

Antrim was a county constituency of the Parliament of Northern Ireland from 1921 - 1929. It returned seven MPs, using the single transferable vote method of proportional representation.-Boundaries:...

, which Graham Walker attributes to a "strain of agrarian Presbyterian radicalism" antagonistic to the Ulster Unionist Party

Ulster Unionist Party

The Ulster Unionist Party – sometimes referred to as the Official Unionist Party or, in a historic sense, simply the Unionist Party – is the more moderate of the two main unionist political parties in Northern Ireland...

. Henderson stood unsuccessfully for the Ulster Liberal Party in the 1929 Stormont election

Northern Ireland general election, 1929

-References:*...

. Ulster Unionist John Maginnis

John Maginnis

John Edward Maginnis was a Northern Irish politician. He was Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament for Armagh from 1959 until he stood down at the February 1974 general election.-References:...

, opposing the use of the single transferable vote

Single transferable vote

The single transferable vote is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through preferential voting. Under STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, after candidates have been either elected or eliminated, any surplus or...

 for the 1973 local elections

Northern Ireland local elections, 1973

Local government in Northern Ireland was reorganised in 1973 by the Local Government Act 1971 and the Local Government Act 1972...

, stated that in the 1920s '[i]t was discovered that under this system the "Don't knows" usually vote for some obscure person. One party which secured a seat in Parliament was the Unbought Tenants.'